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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Baz Luhrmann is a director that loves the
spectacle of cinema.From the visual, to
the technical, to the audio – it is clear that Baz is a card-carrying cinephile
that caught the bug early in his life.His early postmodern classics Romeo & Juliet
and Moulin Rouge were
blockbuster events in the cinema calendar and are much loved, yet divisive
films.I have to admit that I am a fan,
even of his pretentious perfume
adverts.He also has a healthy 4-5
year gap between his film releases, which to me signifies a craftsman at
work.The news that he was directing the
Fitzgerald classic was instantly exciting to me…

The narrative of the novel has been much
discussed as a classic example of an unreliable narrator due to the voice being
that of a secondary character and not Gatsby himself.The film keeps this device and introduces us
to Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a New York bond trader who has recently moved
to the nouveau riche area of Long Island.He lives next door to the extravagant, yet reclusive J. Gatsby; a man
that throws lavish parties but is rarely seen.Nick gets invited to one of the parties, alongside his flamboyant cousin
Daisy Buchanan who is married to the hyper-rich capitalist Tom.Gatsby takes a liking to Nick and soon
persuades him to reintroduce him to Daisy, thus beginning an affair that leads
to a confrontation with each of the characters and the unwrapping of Gatsby’s
enigmatic past (for more detail, read here).

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

For his latest gay outing,
Almodovar has managed to combine the two elements of his work that I have always
been so satisfied with, sexuality and politics, and created a fun, yet
intelligent future cult-classic.

The story is almost
entirely set within a plane that is flying aimlessly above Spain with a broken
landing gear.The stars of the film are
the cabin crew and business class guests, all of which have secrets that will
eventually come out.Due to the trouble
with the flight, the crew has drugged the economy class passengers and is left to
entertain the quirky bourgeois flyers in the front.This set up allows for the action to unfold
like a play, which descends into drugs, drink and sex in order to kill time as
they wait to hear what is to be of their fate from the traffic control below…

Whatever people think about Google's business ethics and recent financial hiccups, no-one can deny their visuals aesthetics. Their slick frontpage has become iconic and synonymous with the web worldwide. A fairly recent nice touch has been the addition of the 'google doodle', a mini graphic or interactive element that celebrates a moment in history.

Today is a celebration of the legendary graphic designer Saul Bass. Enjoy...